Olympic tree

Olympic tree

As we walked in Olympos, watching the ruins, my eye was caught by this tree, by the way the sunlight struck through the leaves and fruits, making it all glow as if from within. I lifted my camera, framed the shot and took this picture.

The red pods against green and beige, the only sharp things in a picture filled with creamy, soft bokeh, are a clear focus for our attention. The picture is not particularly subtle, but its context enriches it — the pillars in the background are from the ruins of the Zeus temple at Olympos: the picture connects across millenia from the seeds of the next generation of trees to the scattered remains of the great architects of ancient Greece. The new is diagonal, dynamic, organic — while the old is vertical, rectangular and steady, still standing after centuries and centuries, thick where the twigs of the tree are thin.